One of the most frustrating things traveling with a carry on bag is being made to give up the bag at the boarding gate, because overhead bins are already full. Even worse is when you’re told you have to gate check the bag because bins are full – and you board the plane only to see there was actually still plenty of room. You could have kept your bag with you!
One Delta passenger had this happen to her and took her frustration out on a flight attendant – who isn’t the one that made her gate check the bag in the first place. And it’s too late for the flight attendant to help, anyway. The bag has already been checked.
The woman said to the crewmember that she “went to college with” Delta CEO Ed Bastian. The Delta flight attendant snapped back, “you should have kept in touch” then! I guess they weren’t that close. Attempted ‘don’t you know who I am’ failed.
Lady behind me on this @delta flight is complaining to the stewardess because they made her check her bag and there’s a ton of room.
Her husband to the stewardess: “you know she went to college with the CEO of Delta”
Stewardess: “You should have kept in touch.”
— Melissa Perri (@lissijean) August 19, 2024
Many airlines, including Delta, have installed larger overhead bins on planes to allow for more carry-on bags. However Delta hasn’t done it for their Boeing 737-800s, and even as they refresh the interiors of these planes still doesn’t plan to do so. The airline isn’t nearly as premium as they often like to suggest. However larger overhead bins are the ultimate in win-win.
Delta Boeing 737-800
More bin space is great for customers:
- Most customers have to pay for checked bags. They’d rather carry on.
- People don’t want to waste their time at baggage claim.
- Checked bags get lost.
More bin space is great for airlines:
- It reduces the need to gate check bags.
- This is work at the last minute, right before push back.
- It can cause a delay of a few minutes, and those delays have ripple effects throughout the day and can be costly to the airline.
A lot more people bring bags onto the plane because of bag fees, and that causes schedule and reliability issues and the need to make investments retrofitting aircraft interiors. There are real costs associated with bag fees that are often ignored. But given the system that’s in place, bigger overhead bins are great – for both customer and airline.
The only problem with these bigger bins? To maximize use of space passengers generally need to turn bags on their sides. They do not do this. Passengers are going to need to re-learn how to stow their bags.
However airlines make customers gate check bags even when there’s plenty of bin space available because they don’t wait until bins fill up to make the decision. They don’t want passengers boarding, hunting for space, and discovering there isn’t any before having to gate check at the last minute. That can cause delays of a few minutes that they’re trying to avoid.
@AmericanAir
Was forced to check bag at gate even tho there were open spaces. Ridiculous pic.twitter.com/xJK0zzsDff— blonde—6 (@wthpeeps666) August 18, 2024
@Delta : all overhead storage is full we have to check your carryon bag
Me: *gets on plane and gestures wildly* pic.twitter.com/Ll2DgLxPQq— Joia (@joia1231) August 18, 2024
As a result they end up inconveniencing the customer. And they do it in a way that seems visibly unnecessary, as passengers look up at empty bins where the bag they just had taken from them could have gone. It’s one of the two most frequent complaints I see with photos in airline social media each day, along with damaged checked bags.
@ Gary — Less bag space is great for Ed Bastian, apparently. At Delta, that’s all that matters.
It is inappropriate for flight crew, whose safety duties include de-escalation of conflicts, to “snap back” at a passenger increasing the probability of a conflict. Further, flight crew are in the position of service, and the passenger is a paying customer. Misguided notions of equity have empowered service professionals of today to act in ways that service professionals of 3 decades ago would have deplored as contrary to etiquette.
The proper response would have been to ignore the comment. If I had supervisory duties, I would remind the crewmember as such.
There are many people who are professional, willing to work hard, and eager to be hired into the role of flight crew at Delta. If this crewmember exhibits a repeat of the snapback incident, termination is warranted.
When I was a station manager, had a passenger who kept dropping my name at the ticket counter. All in the name of trying to get out of bag fees. Claimed to know me from another state I’d lived in. Well, nothing you couldn’t find by knowing the company, my position, and location on LinkedIn. Trouble is, I never met or heard of the person. Went on for like two years. They even started dropping off small gifts for me at the ticket counter. At one point, I finally was like A for effort, let the guy check in his 5lb overweight bag to Florida for no overweight fee. Too bad I’m not a baseball fan… kept leaving programs and stuff from spring training games for me.
Airlines should stop being like idiots. It’s not too hard to handle the overhead space. One way is to:
1. Provisionally tag bags if the overhead might be full.
2. Passenger boards and try to find space. The passenger is asked to place the bag at the first available space. If the passenger heads towards the back with no place found, the passenger hands the bag to the FA at the back. The pile of bags in the rear are then loaded.
2a. They can be loaded by the FA’s banding together and passing the bags forward, or
2b. They open a rear door and pass the bags outside.
It’s not rocket science to pass bags out of the plane.
FAs could turn the bags on their sides, organize the bins, make more spaces, as boarding goes on. Supervise it a bit, tell passengers how to do. What are they all doing during boarding anyway? It just takes one to greet and direct traffic.
@derek – Who they going to pass the bags to out the rear of the plane?
SFO/EWR
How dare you comment as you did. So even today, FA’s should be talked down to with no protections?
Thanks for your concern!
RunningJock, yes.
This is just a vent and if an FA cannot handle customer venting, then they are not suited to be customer facing.
I was required to check my carry-on, on a domestic connection to an international flight, did so unthinkingly, checked through to my destination. On board i realized to my horror, my passport is in the checked bag. Long story short, missed my flight, and two more. Had to chase my bag from NY to Washington. Finally got it, and then had to be routed through Switzerland to Cape Town. In all fairness, the airline paid for my accommodation (twice), and I made my safari, so no harm was done, but surely the crew who were checking carry-ons could’ve asked – is there anything in your carry on that you might need for your upcoming flights?
I agree with SFO/EWR
The only way I have gotten out of mandatory carry on bag check, was to look like a deer in headlights and firmly say, ” NO! It has all his medicines in there, we are not gate checking it.” When they push me I simply stand firm, I keep repeating the same thing with a few more firm NO-s. I will let them gate check my bag if I have to, but not his bag, so far this has worked. I tell them “He has 4 stents in his heart, we are NOT checking this bag, it has to go with us on board.”
I find it ridiculous that people bring the biggest, most overstuffed bags as carry-on. Avelo air charges more for carry- on than for checked. This is a brilliant concept. Passenger loading and unloading is a breeze, as there are not flyers jamming up the aisles attempting to cram or dislodge their bloated luggage in the overheads.
@oneye and others that travel. You are an adult. YOU, packed your bags. YOU, need to take essential items, meds, passports, etc OUT of checked luggage. Why do people disengage their brains when they walk into an airport, and expect to be spoon feed?
I don’t check bags, my carryon fits in the overhead, even on RJs. My essential items, are in my backpack, and it never leaves my sight.
Be a smart traveler.
For the uppity people lamenting how “service people” don’t know their place anymore, I’ll have you know that flight attendant isn’t a service position. The fact that they serve you food is incidental and not the point of the job; they just happen to be the only people on board in a position to distribute meals. Flight attendants’ chief duty is *safety*. They’re not cocktail waitstaff. They’re not obligated to put up with a bunch of Karens treating them like crap, either. I certainly wouldn’t hold it against them if I had witnessed that. It wasn’t escalation, it was refusal to put up with some entitled, whiny passenger’s bullcrap.
Secondly, to the people saying “what are they all doing during boarding anyway.” Not getting paid, that’s what. Delta was the first airline to grant *50%* pay for flight attendants during boarding (not even full pay), and that was a compromise they made to keep flight crew from unionizing. No other airline pays flight attendants for boarding *or* deplaning. They only get paid from the moment the doors close until the moment they open again. I sure as hell don’t like to work for free (or half pay), and they still do it because people suck and it’s the only way to get the plane to pull off the gate at the expected time. Making that happen often requires getting in front of a potential delay by checking carry-ons before knowing whether or not the bins will be full (which they otherwise almost always end up being).
So when the article casually states that they make you check your bag “to save a few minutes” like it’s some kind of petty overreach, they are either ignorant about air travel or pretending to be in order to stir up outrage. A few minutes can make a *huge* difference. Ask air traffic controllers. If the plane misses its departure window, it has to wait for a bunch of other planes to take theirs until they can be given a new opportunity to depart. And you just *know* that if that happens because cabin bags need to be checked at the last minute, the same a**holes antagonizing flight attendants for having to preemptively check their carry-ons at the gate for nothing will be the *first ones* to ‘ask to speak to a manager” because of how “outrageous” it is that they are being delayed 2 hours due to the overhead bins filling up.
And you wonder why flight attendants clap back at passengers? I sure don’t.
Get over it! Check the damn bag.
The idiot airlines should look to the Comment section of this blog for reasonable solutions to the overhead bin issue. The commenter who deplored the FA for snapping back at the customer is spot on. Delta FA’s have always had an attitude.
So Diarrhea Delta, have Special Ed Bastian read the comments. I don’t think he is smart enough to see the solution but it’s there.
I wonder how much it costs airlines to gate check more bags than necessary. There is a cost. Additional labor is needed while having a person load and unload their own bag is free. There could be a cost if the now checked bag is damaged or lost. Further, if the connection is tight and the person has to wait in the jet bridge for the bag, some costs associated with a missed connection could occur. A less quantifiable cost would be due to loss of customers upset by customer unfriendly actions by airline personnel.
@derek. I’m no airline logistics expert, but I suspect one would give your plan an F.
A couple of common problems with the “Overhead bins are full” situation that I haven’t seen addressed are:
–People in the first couple groups boarding are putting their Under-the-Seat-Items into the overhead bins, in addition to their normal bin baggage, thereby crowding the bins. No one monitors this.
–There are rarely, if any, size-check devices at the gates, resulting in people bringing oversized items to the gate which take excessive space in the bin; those people knowing that if their item is gate-checked, they’ve avoided having to pay for an item that should normally be checked.
–At least 3 times in the last year I’ve turned my roller bag on its side to take less space in the bin, only to have an FA tell me to put it flat “because the bin door won’t close”, even after I was able to push the door closed to check the fit after the bag was on its side. (One of those times an FA came along, saw the bag on its side and put it flat)
Why don’t people understand that they are getting on an airplane, not a bus? Space is not the biggest issue. There is something called weight-and-balance. Even the flight attendants have to do head counts according to zones. The pilots have to dial in numbers and check the air density right up until the last minute to make sure weight is properly distributed to get the wee bus in the air and keep it there! If only the flying public had to be educated in the basics, they would stop whining and be thankful for a capable and careful crew that gets them to their destination alive! Good grief.
Once, AA forced me to gate check a soft bag containing an expensive and fragile gift. I told them and they just threatened me for refusing to gate check. So I gate checked, sat down in my window seat and watched the baggage guy throw my bag so hard it went completely over the cart and splatted on the tarmac. Gift destroyed. And AA refused to take responsibility because, they said, the item broke in Houston and I filed my claim after exiting in Florida. I won’t fly AA if it’s free.
You can’t pass bags out a back door. For one, would require major rework of most airlines procedures. Flight attendants don’t open the door from the inside. You also can’t climb up a belt loader to that height. So you need to roll up some air stairs. Then you’ve got to carry the bags down the stairs. Close door. Remove stairs. Before undoing all of those safety-related procedures, FAA will just say “check the damn bags at the gate.”
A little tongue-in-cheek, but you think F/As are going to actively assist with bags while they “are not being paid” ?? Though it is funny… you see it on some airlines like Allegiant where they actively help. And boarding happens so quickly they often get everyone on board and leave early.
@ RunningJock — Perhpas you are not aware that SFO/EWR apparently thinks s/he is superior to everyone else.
I literally can top this with a twist. Three or four times. Among them:
We had a surly agent at SRQ who seemed to be inventing his own rules about what could and could not go on board the plane. I held my ground and he acted as if we was doing me a big favor. Two minutes later I went back to him, handed him my phone and said that the Vice President of inflight services was waiting to speak to him.
Another time at MEM I saw bags being thrown and slammed onto the plane. I mentioned this to a red coat and she said, “How do you know it’s your bag?” I replied, “It doesn’t matter whose bags they are. They should be treated properly.” She tossed a comment card at me and said that if I didn’t like it I could fill it out. I walked away and made a call to the CEO, explaining what happened and telling him I’d be back in my office on Tuesday. Back at work I got a call from him. “I was at Memphis when you called and got your message a minute later. I went down there and saw what you saw and spoke to the same lady who tossed a comment card at me. I handed it back to her and said that it wouldn’t be necessary. Then I handed her my card.”
Another time I saw a gate agent who seemed to be a miniature miracle worker, managing a myriad of problems with a smile and great efficiency. I called in and said that they should clone her. The CEO got the message, went down to the gate and told her that he had heard what a great job she was doing and wanted to see for himself. (We should never be afraid to praise good service.)
As for bags, I haven’t checked one in close to 20 years and I make sure that every bag is “within specs” per the contract of carriage. One in particular that I got at CVG was designed for RJ overhead bins. It has “CRJ/ERJ OK” stenciled on it and I also carry a picture of it fitting in a CRJ200 overhead bin. If you bring try to bring a nonconforming bag on board you have no leg to stand on.
Airlines have it backwards. They should be charging people to carry-on bags. There should be a flat fee for bags that meet requirement and a service charge for anything that’s slightly over weight or who dimensions are within 5% but still over. Check bags under a certain weight per bag should be free anything heavier should carry a price based on Weight and dimensions similar to the algorithm that UPS and other freight carriers use.
I had a carryon with important items that I was not sure would fit my personal. Was told the bins were nearly full and we had free checking if we wanted. Important items so declined. Was boarding and putting my half sized carryon in the overhead but was stopped by FA. She took my bag out and said the offer was not optional. Told her ok let me switch a few items out. She said that I could not and walked off with the bag since it was already marked with my name.
She came back with someone Karter and asked “what was so important that you needed out of that bag?” Hoping to get a rise out of me.
I responded “2 heart meds, 1 epilepsy med, and a rescue inhaler.”
The FA turned pale and ran off to find my bag. The big guy did not look happy all flight and as soon as we touched down again he told her to always ask that question before confiscating carryon. He then asked if I was going to Charlotte. Told him nope just a stop over to Jersey. He looked more upset as my bag would be on a switchover plan and not be unloaded for pick up.
Thankfully I did not need any of the items.
SFO/EWR, who has reading comprehension problems, says:
> Further, flight crew are in the position of service, and the passenger is a paying customer.
As the article stated, ” And it’s too late for the flight attendant to help, anyway. The bag has already been checked.”
Reading is Fundamental.
It happened to me on August 3rd Delta from Atlanta to Ft Lauderdale
I was forced to give up my carry on when there was plenty of space in the compartment.Its not about the weight, because the weight is the same wether is up in the cabin or below,besides the crew doesn`t check the weight.
Why if there is enough space they do this?there must be a logical reason?
I was very pissed off,and I let the FA know very loudley about it.
Will try to avoid Delta.It hasn’t happened before with other airlines.
You would think most airlines would charge for carry on space. This would greatly shift the issue at hand of people placing not one, but Both carry on items in the overhead bins..making space a fleeting issue at hand. Furthermore, bag designers what make luggage should work with Airlines as well as airplane manufacturers to make a “ close to standard” bag size for the overhead bin. ( think a 737-800, with the older smaller bins.) this would also alleviate an on going issue where some bags are so wide they can’t be stood on their side like a Book on a shelf.
Lastly, and this is a huge one.
To reply to SFO/EWR…you sound like someone Who most anyone in the service industry absolutely hates and disrespects. FAs are not there to serve. Their primary role is safety and that’s always first, also your reading comprehension is abysmal at best ( meaning very poorly) yes passengers are paying for a service, but the job of a flight attendant is not to be a walking doormate just because someone paid for a service. They can and should be allowed to fire back at a snarky remark that is absolutely baseless. The job and role in itself has lost its respect over the years sadly and I feel horrible for what some flight crews have to deal with. PASSENGERS DO BETTER OR TAKE THE BUS!